Vince Gill

Multiple Grammy Award-winning country singer Vince Gill went eye to eye and nose to nose, stopping short of tooth for a tooth with members of the provocative Westboro Baptist Church, who protested his concert Sunday in Kansas City, Mo., taunting him because he had divorced and remarried. In a confrontation captured on a 55-second video that's gone viral on YouTube, Gill tells the protesters, “I came to see what hate looked like.” One woman asked Gill, “What are you doing with another man's wife?

This post has been updated. See note below for details. Emmylou Harris, Vince Gill, Heart and Jason Mraz will appear together on March 4 as the annual All For the Hall benefit concert returns to Los Angeles to raise funds for Nashville's Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. Actress Rita Wilson will host this year. This marks the 10th year of the event which brings together country, rock and pop musicians to raise money to help sustain the hall of fame and museum's operations.

When I spoke to Vince Gill earlier this year about “Bakersfield,” his album saluting the songs of Buck Owens and Merle Haggard, he mentioned that the supporting tour would bring him and his collaborator on the album, steel guitarist Paul Franklin, to the city the collection was named for. I asked whether they'd be performing in the most obvious place: Buck Owens' Crystal Palace. Gill was plainly sad to say no, that they'd be playing the nearby Rabobank Theater to accommodate more people.

Taylor Swift will become only the second recipient ever of the Country Music Assn.'s Pinnacle Award, presented to an artist who dominates music worldwide. She'll receive the award during Wednesday's telecast of the 47th annual CMA Awards on ABC-TV. The CMA came up with the Pinnacle Award in 2005 and gave it that year to Garth Brooks, whose streak of hit albums in the 1990s and 2000s has placed him third, behind only the Beatles and Elvis Presley, on the Recording Industry Assn.'s list of top-selling album artist of all time.

MUSIC Vince Gill The singer, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist has multiple studio albums on his resume, not to mention 20 Grammys and 18 CMA Awards. Catch a display of his high, lonesome tenor voice and soul-country guitar licks during his current U.S. tour, featuring material from his latest long-player, "Guitar Slinger. " Troubadour, 9081 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood. 8 p.m. $29.99. (310) 276-6168. http://www.troubadour.com . ART Modern Art in Los Angeles: Assemblage and Politics Los Angeles artists Ed Bereal, Mel Edwards, George Herms, Nancy Reddin Kienholz and Betye Saar, who used the medium of assemblage to comment on the political climate of postwar America, will discuss the connection between art and social critique.

BAKERSFIELD - Peddling the songs of Buck Owens and Merle Haggard in the heart of Bakersfield - when you're neither Owens nor Haggard - could rank on the scale of tough gigs right up there with hauling coals to Newcastle and selling ice to Eskimos. That was anything but the case, however, when 20-time Grammy Award winner Vince Gill and longtime friend steel guitarist Paul Franklin brought their new tribute album, "Bakersfield," to its namesake town to celebrate the distinctive West Coast strain of country music and its two most prominent practitioners, who emerged there more than half a century ago. It was no surprise, ultimately, that Gill and Franklin were accorded heroes' welcomes for shining the spotlight anew on a richly fertile period and place by nearly 3,000 Bakersfield residents who filed into the Rabobank Arena Theater on Friday night.

It doesn't get much more all-American than fireworks and Vince Gill. The country superstar joins the L.A. Philharmonic and the U.S. Air Force Band of the Golden West for three consecutive nights of patriotic music and dazzling pyrotechnics. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave., Hollywood. 7:30 p.m. Fri., Sat. and Sun. $12-$120. (323) 850-2000.

This post has been updated. See note below for details. Emmylou Harris, Vince Gill, Heart and Jason Mraz will appear together on March 4 as the annual All For the Hall benefit concert returns to Los Angeles to raise funds for Nashville's Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. Actress Rita Wilson will host this year. This marks the 10th year of the event which brings together country, rock and pop musicians to raise money to help sustain the hall of fame and museum's operations.

Vince Gill made it tough to figure out Sunday at the Wiltern LG which recent career move is more mind-boggling: his release of a four-CD set containing 43 new songs or his decision to include more than half of them in one three-hour, boundary-leaping concert. The 17-time Grammy winner may have thought he was putting fans' patience to the test by building a show around songs from that quadruple album, "These Days," which has been out less than a month.

Vince Gill made country music history Wednesday by becoming the first person to win top male vocalist four straight times. He also was voted entertainer of the year at the 28th annual Country Music Assn. awards. "I'm so thankful to be a part of it. I won't take it lightly. I'll treat you with class," the 37-year-old said in accepting the award at the Grand Ole Opry House. He shared another award as part of the all-star compilation "Common Thread: The Songs of the Eagles," which won best album.

Complementary stories about widely admired country singer and songwriter Roger Miller provided a highlight of Tuesday's Writers Bloc session in Santa Monica featuring Johnny Cash biographer and longtime L.A. Times pop music critic Robert Hilburn with his guest for the evening, Kris Kristofferson. Hilburn, whose new book “Johnny Cash: The Life” was published Tuesday, told an audience of about 300 that he first met Kristofferson in 1970. It was shortly before he'd been hired full time by the newspaper, when he was pursuing an interview with Miller, who was in Los Angeles at the time.

BAKERSFIELD - Peddling the songs of Buck Owens and Merle Haggard in the heart of Bakersfield - when you're neither Owens nor Haggard - could rank on the scale of tough gigs right up there with hauling coals to Newcastle and selling ice to Eskimos. That was anything but the case, however, when 20-time Grammy Award winner Vince Gill and longtime friend steel guitarist Paul Franklin brought their new tribute album, "Bakersfield," to its namesake town to celebrate the distinctive West Coast strain of country music and its two most prominent practitioners, who emerged there more than half a century ago. It was no surprise, ultimately, that Gill and Franklin were accorded heroes' welcomes for shining the spotlight anew on a richly fertile period and place by nearly 3,000 Bakersfield residents who filed into the Rabobank Arena Theater on Friday night.

When I spoke to Vince Gill earlier this year about “Bakersfield,” his album saluting the songs of Buck Owens and Merle Haggard, he mentioned that the supporting tour would bring him and his collaborator on the album, steel guitarist Paul Franklin, to the city the collection was named for. I asked whether they'd be performing in the most obvious place: Buck Owens' Crystal Palace. Gill was plainly sad to say no, that they'd be playing the nearby Rabobank Theater to accommodate more people.

Multiple Grammy Award-winning country singer Vince Gill went eye to eye and nose to nose, stopping short of tooth for a tooth with members of the provocative Westboro Baptist Church, who protested his concert Sunday in Kansas City, Mo., taunting him because he had divorced and remarried. In a confrontation captured on a 55-second video that's gone viral on YouTube, Gill tells the protesters, “I came to see what hate looked like.” One woman asked Gill, “What are you doing with another man's wife?

Blake Shelton and NBC have a message for victims of this week's Oklahoma tornado: Help is on the way. Shelton, country-music star and judge on NBC's hit "The Voice," is organizing a benefit concert in Oklahoma City to help with disaster-relief efforts in his home state. On Friday, NBC announced it will air the event live in many markets across six networks -- NBC, Style, E!, G4, Bravo and CMT -- at 9 p.m. May 29. Joining Shelton will be Reba and Vince Gill, along with Shelton's wife, country singer Miranda Lambert.

Thursday's funeral service for Country Music Hall of Fame member George Jones will be a star-studded affair featuring a host of musicians, political figures and other celebrities paying final tribute to one of the most widely lauded singers of the 20th century at the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville, Tenn. A raft of musicians are slated to perform, including Alan Jackson, Kid Rock, Vince Gill with Patty Loveless, Brad Paisley, Wynonna Judd, Randy Travis, Charlie Daniels, Ronnie Milsap, the Oak Ridge Boys, Travis Tritt and Tanya Tucker.

Vince Gill is a living, breathing and singing testament to the virtues of living right. On Sunday at the Pond of Anaheim, the Oklahoma singer with the phenomenal voice came off as boyishly handsome and playfully sexy, and if he lacks the out-of-control dark side of Elvis--whose Southern gentleman manner Gill evokes--more power to him. There were times during the two-hour-plus performance, in fact, when it seemed as if Gill's biggest weakness was his lack of any.

Artists as diverse as Kelly Clarkson, Brad Paisley, Dolly Parton and Alan Jackson are among those speaking out about the death today of celebrated singer George Jones. "It's a sad day for country music," said Loretta Lynn, while Paisley noted that Jones' hard-living life was evidence that "mistakes, missteps, and bad choices are not the end of the world. " Jones, 81, died at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville. He had been suffering from a fever and irregular blood pressure.